


To Our Waking Souls

by elle_stone



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, Fluff, M/M, Minor appearances by Clarke Griffin and Raven Reyes, Sad Backstory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-22
Updated: 2018-10-22
Packaged: 2019-08-05 16:52:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16371440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elle_stone/pseuds/elle_stone
Summary: Miller, new to town but finally ready to put down roots, answers an unusual Craigslist roommate ad promising breakfast food, chickens, and Pride—and ends up finding a real home at last.For the prompt: “I answered your weirdly specific craigslist roommate ad as a joke and now we’re living together,” requested by anonymous on tumblr.





	To Our Waking Souls

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from the John Donne poem, "The Good-Morrow."
> 
> I don't know if I used this prompt correctly but this is what I came up with--I hope you enjoy reading, anon!

_UPSTAIRS OF TWO-STORY HOUSE FOR RENT. Three rooms and one bath (shower/tub), small balcony. Separate entrance accessible by outside stairs. Partially furnished. Street parking. Ten minutes from downtown by car. $200/month._

 

_If you are uncomfortable with any of the following, this rental is not for you:_

_Sharing a kitchen;_  

 _Lawns that are left unmowed;_  

 _Large sunflowers;_  

 _Chickens;_  

 _Offers of ineptly cooked breakfast dishes (not always at breakfast time);_  

_Prominent displays of Pride._

 

_Looking for someone laid back and fairly quiet, willing to deal with occasionally nosy neighbors, and fond of sunsets. House is a little old so preference given to potential roommates with knowledge of home repair._

_Text or call Bryan for more info or if interested._

 

*

The sunflowers are not large. Miller would rather call them _gigantic_ , as they tower up to the bottom edge of the second story windows like alien plants, their petals a burnished gold and their centers a series of wide, staring eyes. They watch him, nodding in the light breeze, as he walks up the path. 

Now that he’s here, he’s not sure what he expected. Except for the undersold sunflowers, the house is just as advertised. But he must have thought, he recognizes only now, as he turns his cell phone around and around in his hands, wondering if he should text again to announce himself or just knock—he realizes he must have assumed it was a joke.

He'd called as a joke. Mostly.

What he should have been doing was exploring the Arkadia real estate scene for real because he can't keep on living indefinitely on Bellamy Blake's couch. Bellamy is his only friend in this sleepy little town, and a good one: bookish and quiet and uptight about almost everything, like leaving spoons in the sink and what an appropriate morning alarm clock sounds like, but somehow still completely chill about Miller staking out a semi-permanent spot in the living room, where he browses through Craigslist every morning, pretending to search out viable housing. Every listing he came across just sounded so grim. Unfurnished rooms. Long lists of rules. Pictures of white walls and a single ceiling lamp.

Bryan's ad seemed to jump off the page by comparison, with its references to chickens and unmowed lawns and sunsets. He'd half-dialed the contact number before he quite knew what he was doing, fingers tapping along with a native curiosity that couldn't be contained. But he stopped himself before the phone on the other end could ring.

"There's no way it's real," he said, putting his phone back in his pocket and tilting his head over the back of the sofa arm, staring at his friend upside down as Bellamy poured himself his morning cup of coffee and rubbed at his eyes.

"What's not real?"

"This." He tapped at the computer screen. "This ad. Here—" He read it aloud, glancing over now and then to catch the expression on Bellamy's face—unfortunately unreadable, as it always was before the caffeine kicked in. 

Eventually, a slight furrow formed between Bellamy's brows. He held out the hand with the coffee mug and pointed in the vague direction of the middle of the screen. "He sounds like your type."

"Because I'm such a big fan of... chickens?"

“No. I don’t know. Breakfast food. Pride. And it's three rooms for two hundred—you're not getting a better deal in this town."

True. Three rooms was about two rooms more than he needed. Maybe even two and a half more. "And a balcony," he added aloud, low and thoughtful like a hum beneath his breath. Then, with more force: "All right, all right. I'll call. But you know it's a hoax, right? I just want to see what kind of person goes through all this trouble just—"

"Serial killer."

Bellamy was sitting in the armchair next to the couch by then, face hidden behind a magazine. His tone was distressingly nonchalant. 

"What?"

He shrugged. "Serial killer. That’s who. Just tell me when you're going over there, and if I don't hear from you within an hour, I'll call the police."

*

The yard is big enough to hold a few dead bodies and still have room for Miller's rotting corpse, which doesn't make him feel terribly confident as he finally climbs the uneven steps to the front door. Stretching out in front of and around the house is a meadow of tall, uncut grasses and wildflowers, bordered by an old gray picket fence, and interrupted only by the flagstone walk down the center, along which Miller's boots had sent out hollow echoes as he walked. The house itself is an ancient peeling gray to match the fence, with a wraparound porch and a creaky old swing—he knows it creaks because he tests it out as he waits for someone to answer his knock. Over the front railing of the porch, to Miller’s right, is draped a giant, faded rainbow flag.

"Prominent displays of Pride," he murmurs to himself.

He knocks again, louder this time, and as he does, he becomes slowly aware of a pricking sensation on the back of his neck: a subtle, creeping sense of being watched. He turns to his right and catches the gaze of the woman next door, who is pruning the flowers on her side of the picket fence. She smiles brightly. Any other type of smile, Miller thinks, even one just a tiny fraction wider or showing more teeth, would look downright ominous when paired with those huge garden shears. She waves at him, and he waves tentatively back.

"You should try the bell, dear," she calls to him. "If he's in the back garden, he won't hear you knocking."

"Okay—um—thanks," he yells back. He feels awkward in the spotlight of her curious gaze but isn’t quite able to look away like he wants to. When he finds the doorbell just to the side of the door and presses it, a mechanical version of windchimes echoes. The neighbor, he can tell, is still watching him.

"Are you Bryan's new boyfriend?" she asks loudly, and tips her wide-brimmed hat back from her face. 

Miller’s not sure what to make of that gesture. Maybe she's trying to see him better. Or maybe she's just protecting the back of her neck from the sun; Miller can feel it on the back of his own neck, and on his forehead and his cheeks, uncomfortably warming his skin.

"Um, no," he says, after an awkward beat. He puts his hands in his pockets and shifts his weight from foot to foot. "I'm the new tenant. Maybe."

The neighbor doesn't seem disappointed, just keeps smiling her welcoming smile at him. As she opens her mouth to reply, she is thankfully cut off by the front door opening at last.

The man on the other side makes Miller completely forget about the neighbor, the wait, even the uncertain words still in his throat. At first, before his eyes adjust to the light, Miller can only perceive him in outline. Details fill in slowly. He’s broad-shouldered, wearing jeans with holes in the knees, and no shirt, and nothing on his feet. The bridge of his nose is pink from too much time out in the sun. His expression is open and friendly, his smile wide and crowded with white teeth. And just to tie the whole image together, he's holding a wrench in his left hand, like he just stepped out of some cheap ‘men of the auto shop’ calendar. It’s the kind of picture Miller would have ripped out and put up in his locker in high school, knowing it was silly and obvious and prepared to make a joke of it but _damn_. 

"Hey," the guy says, as he holds out his right hand. His palm is sweaty, but his handshake is firm. "I'm Bryan."

"Nate," Miller answers. His own name sounds distant to his ears. "I'm here about the roommate ad...?"

"Oh, yeah, of course." Bryan shoots him another smile, then leans out of the doorway, perilously close to the edge of the bubble that delineates Miller's personal space, and waves to the neighbor, who’s still watching them brazenly from her side of the fence. "Hi, Mrs. Kane," he calls. 

She waves back to him as Bryan ushers Miller inside, into a cool, shadowy front hall that smells of wood and old, late summer heat. 

"Sorry about that," Bryan's saying. Miller's caught up in watching the space between his shoulder blades and can't figure out in the slightest what the apology might be for. "I hope you weren't waiting long. And that Mrs. Kane didn't bother you. She's nice, she just likes to know everything that's going on in the neighborhood, you know? Anyway, I was in the kitchen, trying to fix the sink, that's why I'm—" He half-turns back to Miller, barely breaking his stride, gestures down at his body like he’s apologizing again and shrugs in a small and self-deprecating way. "I did mention in the ad that the house is a little old, right?"

Miller tries to say 'yeah' but it comes out as "Um,” and then a nod, and then finally, "You did, yeah," just as they reach the kitchen at the back of the house. 

The kitchen is wide and bright and crowded; like the front porch and the yard, it sends out strong _solitary cottage_ vibes. Sunlight splashes in broad beams through the row of windows, picking out highlights in the wooden countertops and sand-yellow floor. Miller immediately feels at ease here. He doesn’t even care that the room is a mess. Every spare space is packed with cooking tools and plates and glassware, but the confusion just makes the kitchen feel lived in. He notices a little radio sitting on top of the fridge, quiet now, its antenna tilted up and to the right; a paperback novel on the table, next to an empty coffee mug.

"Sorry about all this crap," Bryan's saying, as he maneuvers his way toward the sink. "I'm not usually like this. I'm just trying to make some space in the cupboards for you. Whoever takes the upstairs rooms, I mean. Also—" He sets the wrench down and gestures again, and Miller sees that the cupboards below the sink are open and that the space on the floor just beyond is littered with tools and dirty dishrags. "I've been trying to fix this leak."

Miller stares at the mysterious, dripping pipes and is about to ask how that's going—obviously poorly, but he's attempting to be polite—when Bryan leans in closer and whispers, conspiratorial and low, "I have no idea what I'm doing."

And Miller grins. "I wouldn't either. Does that hurt my chances of getting the apartment any?"

Bryan shrugs. "No. If I weren't so stubborn, I would have called a plumber this morning but..." He trails off, sighs, and kicks the cupboard doors closed with a low thud. "I'll deal with that later. Let me show you the rooms."

On his way back around the counter, he grabs the t-shirt he'd left lying over the back of one of the chairs, and Miller bites back a sigh as Bryan pulls it on again. 

Bryan leads him out through a sliding glass door to the back porch and the yard, which is, if anything, even wilder and more untamed than the grass out front. Except for a small vegetable garden to one side, a small island of human labor pushing back against the wilderness, the back of the property appears to be mostly nature’s domain. Tall, thin meadow grasses, interspersed with blue and yellow wildflowers, wave and sway in a blissful late summer breeze; they reach all the way up to the porch itself, and all the way out to a distant barrier of trees. 

"It's actually kind of a big property," Bryan says, perhaps catching Miller gazing out to the horizon, the expression of awe on his face. "They’re all like this on this street. Eventually, the town's going to want to split the lots up and develop the space more but for now this is... It's mine all the way to the trees." He shrugs again. Miller wants to ask him how he lucked into a place like this, but he doesn't. Something in Bryan's expression, wistful and soft and a little sad, tells him it's not the right time.

Instead, he points to an unusual bit of bare earth in the wide back yard, a fenced in patch with a little gray shelter in its center, and asks, "What's in there?" It seems like a safer question and anyway, he's honestly curious. The shelter looks like a little house, except that its front yard is entirely enclosed, so that the tiny building forms the short end of a medium-sized wire-mesh cage.

"That? Oh. Yeah, that's the chicken coop," Bryan answers. He says it as if it were a usual sort of answer, as if everyone just kept chickens roaming about in his back yard, and if he notices the surprised, open-mouthed stare Miller's hitting him with, he doesn't say a thing about it. "I mentioned them, didn't I? In the ad."

"I thought you were joking," Miller answers. "Or... being metaphorical."

"Metaphorical chickens?" Bryan laughs. "Okay, _that_ would be weird. Do you want to meet them?"

He does. He wants overly formal introductions. He wants to meet each one by name. He wants to know what size and what color they are and how they move and what they sound like. But he just says, "Yeah, sure," like it’s nothing, as Bryan leads him down the porch steps and into the yard. The thick grasses tickle and grab at his legs as he walks. He reaches down to his skim his hands over the tops of them, until he feels like he's miles out from other people and real life, like the dirt beneath his feet is trying to pull him down and bring him home. 

"Hopefully at least some of them are out in the run," Bryan's saying, as he comes around the side of the little house—the chicken coop, Miller reminds himself—and stops, looking down. 

"How many do you have?"

"Five.” He gestures briefly. “Two are hiding right now, though."

The sight of the three chickens currently strutting around the enclosed chicken run is both more exciting than Miller expected and, somehow, anticlimactic, too. Two of them have dark red feathers, while the third is a deep, shining black, and they’re each about the size he would have guessed a chicken would be—nothing alarming here. Like chickens on TV, or wherever. But when one of the red ones looks up at him, tilts its head and stares at him, eyes round and dark and warm, he's struck by how alive it is, how real, by the flash of connection between himself and this new creature and the way it sparks a pleasant feeling in his chest. That's the surprise. That he should feel so immediately invested in this strange and random animal, that it took so little, that he's gone.

"What are their names?" he asks, only after a long pause. He returns to himself in the same split-second he realizes that Bryan is staring at him, and smiling.

"Those three," Bryan answers, "are Mars, Venus, and Earth. And Jupiter and Pluto are hiding."

"You named them after the planets?" He raises his eyebrows, and Bryan just shrugs.

"Do you have better names in mind?"

"No." He glances back at the chicken who was staring at him, and gestures to it with his chin. "They're good names. Which one is she?"

"Earth," Bryan says. "And I think she likes you."

Miller laughs, short and loud, and says, "I like her, too."

He doesn't even need to see the upstairs rooms. Short of black mold streaks on the bathroom tile or asbestos peeking through giant cracks in the walls, there's not much of anything that would make him say no to this house—to the chickens and the scattered blue flowers in the yard and the leaky sink and the pride flag and to Bryan, who's watching him watching the bird, biting the corner of his mouth to keep his smile from beaming too bright.

But he holds back on blurting out _I'll take it_ , because he doesn't want to look too eager, and because they have some motions to go through still and that’s fair. It doesn't matter. He knows. He watches the chickens' tiny claws picking and scratching at the dirt, the short, precise motions of their necks, the smooth, sleek shine of their feathers. And he knows he's home.

*

Bellamy stands in the doorway with his arms crossed, surveying the room. His expression is unreadable.

"That's a nice bed," he says, finally.

Miller thinks this would be an excellent intro to a really bad porno, if only Bellamy had put a little flirt into his voice—except that he’s just stating the obvious here. Miller’s new place boasts an excessively nice bed. A queen. Bigger than anything he's ever slept in before, and sometimes at night he doesn't know what to do with all that space, so he stretches his body out like a starfish, trying to reach all the corners at once. 

Other nights, he curls off to one side, as if he were still stuck on Bellamy's couch, facing the window and watching the dim starlight that limits the reach of the dark.

"It came with the place," he says, and Bellamy snorts, a short bit of laughter that gets caught in his nose. 

"You don't have much of a bedside table, though," he points out, gesturing with his chin at the stack of milk crates on top of which Miller's placed a lamp (also Bryan's), and a book, and where he's left this morning's coffee mug, mostly empty and perilously close to the edge. The mug he got from downstairs. He's not sure if that's allowed or not but his kitchenware, what little he has, is still in boxes in the corner of his second spare room.

"Yeah, but I have this dresser—"—which will be useful, eventually, though most of his clothes still live in the open suitcase on the floor—"and a futon and a table and some chairs in the other room."

Bellamy tilts his head. "It's like your new place can't decide if it's an adult apartment or a dorm room."

"So, it's having an identity crisis." Miller shrugs. "I haven't even lived here a week."

Bellamy shoots him a look, like he’s not sure that’s the real issue here, like he’s judging Miller for the awkwardness with which he’s putting down his roots, or the time it took him to get here.

“I’m just saying, it’s a little empty.”

"We can’t all have your impeccable interior decorating skills," Miller answers, as Bellamy starts a slow circuit of the room. Miller is not, despite how he may sound, annoyed, or bitter, or even worried; he just needs something to say to cover up how lost he still feels, sometimes, when he unlocks the door at the top of the stairs and steps into his new place, the first place he's lived in a while that feels like it could be something real. Not just a temporary thing. Not just a sleeping on the couch thing or a spare room thing. If Bellamy’s look was meant to be judgmental, it’s still not as harsh as Miller has been on himself. Whatever his friend might be thinking, he’s thought himself, and worse.

"I can get some people together and we could go shopping for some..." Bellamy glances down again at the milk crates, and carefully moves the coffee mug away from the edge. "Non-dorm furniture. If you want."

"Should I be insulted by that offer?"

"Do you want to keep living like you're still eighteen?"

Miller raises his eyebrows. He doesn't say it, because it's obvious: would he have come here, gotten a real job, started feeling out roots, if he weren't ready to try being an adult? Isn’t the mere act of standing here a significant good faith effort toward being the sort of upstanding citizen Bellamy’s been now for years? Isn’t he trying? Isn’t it clear?

 _What else do you want?_ he might ask.

Out loud, he says only, "As long as it's cheap."

Bellamy hums and answers, “I know some places,” and Miller’s about to agree, with feigned reluctance, when he’s startled by the sound of footsteps creaking up the inside stairs. He jerks his gaze to the doorway.

“Hey,” Bryan’s voice calls out to them, still from a fair distance. He sounds like he’s on the stairs, and he briefly raps his knuckles against the wall, an imitation of a knock at the door. “I promise I won’t make it a habit to come up this way, because I _do_ respect your privacy, I swear, but I just wanted to know…” His voice wafts closer and closer, until at last he pokes his head in tentatively around the door. “Do you want something to eat? I’m about to make lunch.”

Miller stares at him, looking wide-eyed and slightly guilty, as if he were a little kid who's been caught doing something bad. Then he glances at Bellamy.

Bellamy shrugs.

Bryan's standing in the doorway now, flicking his gaze between them and shifting his weight from foot to foot. He looks awkward, and a bit guilty too, like he's interrupted something besides a bit of conversation about furniture, and it takes an absurdly long time for Miller to remember that he still needs to reply.

"Oh. Yeah, I guess—I am hungry. If you don't mind—?"

"I wouldn't have offered if I minded," Bryan answers. Then he turns to Bellamy: "Do you—?"

"Uh, this is Bellamy, by the way," Miller puts in, too fast, with a short gesture in Bellamy's direction. "Bellamy, Bryan—my—" Housemate? Landlord? "He lives downstairs."

Bellamy steps forward and holds out his hand, while Bryan crosses the still vast space between them to shake it. "Nice to meet you"s are exchanged.

"You're welcome to lunch, too, if you want," Bryan adds, but Bellamy just shakes his head.

"I actually have to get going. But you two," and he shoots Miller a look, only a few seconds long, but that's more than long enough in best friend code—long enough for Miller to feel an unpleasant heat creeping up the back of his neck—"You two have fun."

*

Bryan's idea of lunch is a large plate of fancy waffles with an array of sausages and, of course, eggs, which Miller realizes only after he's tasted one must have come from right in their backyard. Eggs from Earth herself, he thinks, and bites back the smile at the corner of his lips.

Maybe he's just imagining it, but he does think they taste better than normal eggs.

"Your boyfriend seems nice," Bryan says, as he drops a ring of fresh cut strawberries on top of his waffles. He's not looking up, like the comment doesn’t merit eye contact or like he just can’t stand to try it, and his voice is excessively casual—so much so that it sends off alarm bells before the words themselves even register.

"Boyfriend?" Miller asks. 

Bryan shrugs, looks up and catches Miller's eye for a moment. Looks back down. "Bellamy? From five minutes ago? Upstairs?"

His meaning clicks suddenly, and Miller’s face breaks into a wide grin. At first, not really paying attention—just hearing the word _boyfriend_ and then feeling a shock of confusion ring through him, temporarily numbing him—he'd been nervous, for no reason he could have described. The irrational fear of being outed, maybe, even though he likes to tell himself he isn't in. Even though Bryan himself wears his pride on the outside of his house. Even though Bryan’s questions aren’t threatening, only curious, a careful excavation less malign even than gossip; Miller’s played that game himself. He didn't need the extra explanation to understand Bryan's mistake, only the extra time: a few moments for the first paralyzing confusion to pass and then it's just funny, and he has to force himself not to laugh. Bellamy, his _boyfriend_. What a thought.

"Oh, no," he says aloud. "No, Bellamy's just a friend. An old friend, from college. I was crashing on his couch before I moved in here. Besides you, he's the only person I know in town."

"Oh. Right."

Bryan clears his throat and rests his forearms on the table in front of him, his gaze downtilted and his hair in his eyes, so Miller can't tell if he's relieved or embarrassed, or some combination of both. He doesn't push it. And he doesn't think much, either, about what this silence might mean, until Bryan adds, "Hey, I'm sorry," so fast that the words jumble over each other, like he has to push them free all at once or not at all. He looks up again with an apologetic little shrug. "I shouldn't have assumed you were gay."

"No, I am."

He says it straight-faced and simple and then takes all the pleasure he can out of the way Bryan stares at him, not quite believing. His mouth ticks up in the corner like he's waiting for the punchline to land. It doesn’t. It already has, in a way. _Gay_ ’s been the punchline of Miller’s life for so long, he’s moved beyond caring anymore.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. Bellamy's not my boyfriend, but—yeah." Then he adds, "I'm not seeing anyone, at the moment," because it seems like this silence needs some words to fill it. Also, he can admit, he’s hoping that’s the question still hanging in the air.

"Neither am I," Bryan answers. He waits a beat, picks up his fork and sets it down again, and adds, "I'm also—"

"Yeah, the flag outside kind of gave that away," Miller says, and grins. “So, are you always a breakfast-for-lunch kind of person or is this a special occasion?”

“Um, no. This is just all I know how to cook. I’m trying to get better…” He gestures behind him at the various messes of the kitchen. It’s even more cluttered now than it was the first time Miller saw it, with his own stuff haphazardly mixed in among Bryan’s, and Miller makes a mental note to clean up a little before he _ever_ invites Bellamy downstairs. “But so far I’ve only gotten breakfast dishes down.”

“If it helps, these are the best eggs I’ve tasted in my life.”

“It does.” Bryan smiles, and when he tilts his head the sunlight coming through the window from the backyard lights up a highlight of blond in his hair, and Miller’s heart thumps a pleasant, strong beat in his chest. “I can’t take all the credit for that, though.”

“I’ll go out and thank the solar system later.”

“Ha—you better.”

*

Miller does not clean the kitchen before Bellamy can see it. If anything, it's a little worse by the next weekend, when Bellamy ducks downstairs for a glass of water, takes in the state of the room, and immediately makes it his next project. Miller could stand to let it wait, himself. He's tired enough from lugging a bedside table, a coffee table, three chairs, two lamps, and a bookcase up to the second floor. Plus, he's gotten used to, even become fond of, the kitchen's chaotic energy. But Bellamy isn't the sort to put off what he can do immediately, and anyway, he has re-enforcements.

Clarke is like a small, blonde, female version of Bellamy, but more obviously tightly wound. Like him, she's fond of precise organization and takes pleasures in visible accomplishments. She led the way at the second-hand furniture store, where the group spent the whole morning debating the sturdiness of shelves and whether certain lamps clashed with certain chairs, and she quickly takes control of the kitchen project, too. Miller lets her and Bellamy argue it out, while he grabs a glass of water and sits at the kitchen table, staying carefully out of the way.

Bellamy's other friend, Raven, is equally uninterested in putting away dishes and bowls. Instead, she latches on to the problem of the sink, which is still dripping, intermittently but interminably—if Miller lived downstairs, he wouldn't be able to sleep, but Bryan claims he doesn't mind. He says he doesn't even hear it anymore, though Miller thinks he’s probably lying because he’s still too stubborn to call a real plumber in to fix it.

"Have you had anyone look at this?" Raven asks, as she lowers herself down to the floor, tilts her head back, and peers all the way into the depths of the cabinet beneath the sink.

"Um—if you don't count the two of us—"

"Of course, I don't count the two of you. I mean someone who knows what they're doing."

Miller's only known her a day, but he's learned to take the attitude with love.

"Then, no," he answers. "But Bryan left his toolkit in the corner if you—"

"Already found it," her voice calls back, somewhat muffled, followed by the distinctive click of the toolbox opening and the metallic clank of shifting tools.

Miller tells himself that he shouldn't be so at ease with people he barely knows fixing his problems for him, but—he's been doing a lot of problem solving recently, all for himself and all on his own. He's been alone a long time. He can't complain about a little help.

"Hey, maybe you should stick to just reorganizing my stuff, okay?" he suggests, glancing up just in time to see Bellamy clear out the last of what was once Bryan's top left cupboard. The jumble on the countertop is considerably more dire now, but that's how cleaning always is: it gets worse, then it gets better. Cleaning and life, maybe.

"It's a holistic process," Clarke answers, at the same time as Bellamy holds up a mixing bowl and says, "I thought this _was_ yours."

Miller raises an eyebrow. "When have you ever known me to own a mixing bowl? You know I'm not much of a... mixer."

Bellamy frowns, confused, and Raven's voice calls to them from the floor: "That sounds like it should be a euphemism for something."

"It's a euphemism for I'm a terrible cook. I'm serious, put it back. This is the only part of the house we share, I don't want him to think I'm—" He grasps his fingers around air, searching for the right word. Rude? Lacking in boundaries? Lacking in friends with boundaries?

"Think you're what?" Bryan asks, from the doorway, and Miller jumps and nearly knocks his glass of water down.

It's not just that he didn't hear the front door opening or any footsteps in the hall, and had no idea that Bryan was standing right behind him. He's flustered despite himself because the boy is, yet again, not wearing a shirt. Sweat shines on his neck and torso, and his skin is flushed a light pink; two earbuds dangle down over his shoulders, attached to a neon yellow chord that disappears into the pocket of his basketball shorts. 

He swipes the back of his wrist across his forehead as he takes in the crowded disorder of the room.

"Think that I… have terrible taste in friends," Miller answers slowly. In the pause before he answered, he downed half the remaining water from his glass, just trying to clear the dry, scratchy sensation from his throat. (He knows what the sensation is. He’s overwhelmed by the breadth of Bryan’s shoulders. But he doesn’t want to dwell on that.) "I'm sorry about them. They have no boundaries."

Bellamy sets the mixing bowl back down with an appropriately guilty look on his face, while Bryan looks from the counter, to Bellamy, to Clarke, and then to the sink, from which a loud screeching sound suddenly emanates, cutting off whatever reply he was about to give.

"Got it!" Raven announces brightly.

"On the upside, I think Raven just fixed our sink," Miller adds, as she lifts herself up and into view, beaming, a soaked and possibly ruined dishtowel in one hand and Bryan's wrench in the other.

"Raven's definitely just fixed your sink and you're welcome," she answers. Then, catching sight of Bryan, she lifts the hand holding the wrench, in a gesture that might be intended as a wave, and adds, "I'm Raven."

"I figured," Bryan answers. "I'm Bryan. And, in that case, I guess I can't be mad about..." He lifts his arms and lets them drop again, gesturing vaguely, "all my stuff migrating out of the cabinets."

Miller's never seen Bryan angry or even annoyed; he has no idea what such an expression would look like on his round, boyish face. This might be it, or the beginning of it. 

"Are you, though, really?" he asks, uncertain. “Mad?”

Bellamy looks on the brink of a sincere and embarrassed apology, but just as the moment stretches out into the terrain of true awkwardness, Bryan's expression breaks, and he grins, and answers, "No. Not at all. If you can figure out an arrangement that works, I'll be grateful. Just let me know where you're hiding everything before you go, okay?"

"Clarke will probably draw us a diagram," Miller says. Clarke sticks her tongue out at him—which assures him that he was right; he's got her pegged—a response he deems, "Very mature."

"We came over to help Miller pick out some new furniture and get it upstairs," Bellamy says, as if a full explanation of their presence were necessary, and perhaps it is. Miller hasn't exactly been building a reputation as a social butterfly, given that Raven and Clarke are the third and fourth non-work acquaintances he’s made since he moved into town. On the other hand, he doubts Bryan cares about what these strangers are doing in his house, other than rearranging his kitchen, and he's surprised when Bryan reacts to this new information with a startled, "Oh!"

"You bought new furniture?" he asks.

"Well, new used furniture," Miller says.

"I should have said something before." Bryan frowns, a guilty look shading across his face. "I have a bunch of stuff up in the attic. I didn't want to bring it all down and crowd up the second floor in case you had your own stuff you wanted to bring... but you're welcome to use anything you want from up there. If you're still missing anything."

The offer is an honest and pleasant surprise, and Miller does not, at first, know how to answer it. More than anything, he's shocked that Bryan can make a generous invitation sound like a confession, like he's committed some social faux-paus and is hoping for forgiveness. 

"We only found a few pieces that worked," Clarke is saying. _She_ makes _this_ sound as if he were carefully re-constructing the living quarters of the palace of Versailles, when really all he wanted was a bookshelf and a bedside table with a drawer, but he keeps his eye-rolling to himself. He likes her, even though he suspects she grew up rich. And he's glad she filled the silence where his polite response should have been.

"So, yeah," he adds, finally, and looks up at Bryan with an attempt at an easy smile. "I'd really appreciate that. Whenever you're free." He realizes belatedly that Bryan may have only intended to let him up into the attic, not give him the full VIP tour himself, but before he can clarify himself any further than, "I mean, I don't want to take the wrong—" Bryan's saying:

"Sure. Yeah. Maybe tomorrow? If you're not busy."

"My day's wide open," Miller answers, and smiles. It’s a softer smile than he’s used to giving and it pulls at odd and unused muscles in his face. But he can’t say that he minds.

“Cool.”

For a moment, it feels like Bryan is about to say something else. His mouth opens, and his gaze darts quickly across Miller’s face. But all he does is sigh, hard and abrupt, and say, “Ah—cool, all right,” again, and stick his hands in his pockets. Then he adds, “Sorry, to run, but I _really_ need to shower,” and Miller replies, wordlessly, by bowing his head, as if in gracefully admitted defeat, and waving him out.

“I like him,” Raven declares into the silence, after Bryan’s footsteps have disappeared back down the hall.

Miller twists around in his chair to face her—“I’m sorry, did I ask you?”—while Clarke, ignoring him, nods thoughtfully and says, “I agree. He seems really relaxed. Very chill. But also… sweet.”

“That’s Miller’s type,” Bellamy tells them, and Miller groans under his breath and passes a hand over his face. 

*

The attic smells like wood and dust, small specks of which float in the thin, broken beams of late afternoon light. The scent reminds Miller of his childhood, of climbing up the narrow staircase to his grandparents' attic, crouching down to look for treasures beneath the low beams.

Bryan's attic, though it feels much like Grandpa Miller's, is bigger, and crowded with a greater variety of things: not just the usual musty cardboard boxes, or the promised extra furniture, but stacks of photo albums, assorted luggage. A steamer trunk. An ornate old mirror propped up against the wall. 

"So, what's off limits?" Miller asks, as he examines a funky sixties-looking floor lamp. It's not really his style but nevertheless, he's intrigued. "Is there anything you don't want me to take?"

"Mmm? Oh, no." Bryan shrugs. He's wandered to the middle of the room, remarkably unmoored for a man standing among his own possessions, and clearly uncertain what to do with his hands. He puts them in his pockets, takes them out again, then sits down in a hardback chair and crosses his arms against his chest. "If I cared for anything up here, I'd have already taken it down."

"Good point," Miller concedes. He's moved on from the lamp to a simple, sturdy bookcase, five shelves tall and almost his height. He tests its balance, sure there must be something wrong with it if's been banished to the top of the house. But it holds true. "This is nice," he says. "I could use this. I mean, I already bought a bookshelf but—"

"You have a lot of books," Bryan finishes. Miller catches his eye and he smiles. "I noticed all the boxes the last time I came up." He gestures to the shelf, and adds, "Take it. Seriously. I don't have any use for it. I've been trying to..." He hesitates. "Be a bit more minimalist."

"Yeah, I know about minimalist." Miller edges around the shelf, taking in a low coffee table, a set of empty pictures frames, and a stack of yearbooks, all with a casual, half-interested glance. "Before I moved here, most of those books were in storage. I haven't... settled down anywhere long enough to bring them out again until now."

Bryan nods slowly, and even though Miller's distracted, maneuvering now around a pile of boxes, still he can imagine the expression on Bryan's face: lightly curious, but not wanting to overstep, not wanting to know too much, not wanting to put himself on the line. 

"What I mean is that everything is minimalist when you don't belong anywhere," Miller adds, and then, before Bryan can answer, he stops up short at an ornate writing desk, which has been shoved unceremoniously against the side wall, under the eaves. "What's this?" he asks, though it’s an idiotic question. He dusts off the desk with his hand, admiring the carvings along the edges, the little letter holes, the set of drawers down the left side.

He hears, but only vaguely, the sound of Bryan's chair scraping against the floor as he stands, his steady, unhurried footsteps as he crosses the room. "That's my grandfather's," he says, from unexpectedly close. Miller almost jumps. He looks over, and sees Bryan standing right next to him, his arms crossed again, staring down at the desk as if staring through it. "He was an artist. Amateur artist, and he used to sit at this desk and draw. He had this big green chair—one of those chairs that swivels around and leans back?—and I used to play around in it. I'd tip it so far back that I thought I'd fall over, just to scare myself. Then I'd tip forward again and look at whatever he was working on, and—it’s weird, how I don't remember much of the sketches. I guess he didn't leave all that many out. But I remember the chair, and I remember his pencils. Number threes. And I remember he would arrange them—" He reaches out, leans into Miller's space and taps his fingertips, three times in a row, against the wood of the back-right corner of the desk.

When he doesn't say anything more for a long time, Miller asks, "What happened to the chair?"

Bryan shrugs. He stands up straighter and drops his arms to his sides but doesn't step away. They are so close that their arms brush together, and the attic starts to feel smaller than it is. The sunlight burnishes the wood with rich earth tones.

"Threw it out," Bryan says. "It was a piece of junk."

"This desk definitely isn't junk, though,” Miller reminds him, fast, hoping to stave off the sadness he can hear in Bryan’s voice, the tight, clipped, words he’s trying not to say. Then he turns back to the desk again—partly to give Bryan some small version of privacy, and partly because he can’t help it. It’s a work of art.

He can feel Bryan watching him. 

"Then let's bring it downstairs."

"You want to put it in one of the first-floor rooms?"

"No." Bryan bumps his arm against Miller's arm. He sounds like he's biting back a smile, like he thinks Miller's question is stupid, but endearingly so. "We'll bring it down to your floor. You use it."

"No. Seriously. I have no use for this—" He gestures vaguely with one hand. Words escape him, so he settles for: "It's too nice."

"And you don't deserve nice things for some reason? Look—I trust you with it. Okay? And you're right, it is nice, and it should be used for something. Even just to sit around and look nice and make you happy."

There's something warm and pleasant, not unlike the soft, slanted rays of the sun, in the thought that Bryan just wants him to be happy.

"All right," he concedes. "Thank you."

"No problem."

"So—" He's not sure, all of a sudden, what either of them could possibly say next, and he's moved by an irrational fear that Bryan will just go, that the space between them will grow again, that whatever is building will break. "So, this is your grandfather's. And the rest of the stuff up here...?"

"It's all family stuff, yeah," Bryan answers. He turns around and leans back against the desk, looking out at the attic with a critical and distant eye. "The house is a family house, actually. I own it. That's why the rent's so cheap. Just utilities and stuff."

"Yeah, I figured." Miller turns around too, mirrors Bryan's pose with his arms behind him, fingers curled around the edge of the desk. He's wondering what else he might say, what else he might ask, and though a variety of questions come to mind, he hesitates. Bryan's manner is too closed, too wary. He opens his mouth sometimes, leans to the side or lifts his shoulders, shifts his weight between his feet, but he doesn't speak for a long while.

"To be honest, I don't really need a roommate," he manages, at last.

"I guessed that, too."

"Yeah, but the house is too big for one person. And I got kind of—"

 _Lonely?_ Miller thinks, and wishes he was certain enough of the moment to reach for Bryan's hand.

"Me, too," he says, instead, so Bryan won't have to put the rest into words.

"I just thought it would be a good way to meet new people. Someone to hang out with."

He's turning his ankle, back and forth and back and forth, facing the sole of his sneaker out and then back to the floor, and this is his only movement, and when he breathes in, it's so deep Miller can see it in his shoulders and chest.

"So, we should hang out," Miller says.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." He moves his hand over, so it bumps up against the edge of Bryan's hand, and lets it rest there. "I could use a new friend, too."

*

They start eating dinner together every night. Once each one has taught the other every recipe he knows—this does not take long—they buy cookbooks and explore the world of cooking blogs; their early experiments are mostly disastrous, but after a week or two, they improve. On nice nights, they eat outside on the back porch, and don't come back in until past dark. 

Bryan teaches Miller how to take care of the chickens, and how to garden, which Miller takes to with surprising ease. Bryan's little patch of tilled ground doubles in size. They talk about planting pumpkins next year. 

Miller does not agree to join Bryan on his daily runs, but he does start going with him to the gym. He institutes a movie night on Fridays and insists that, at least sometimes, they watch a horror movie or two. He lends Bryan his books. Sometimes they read together on the second-floor balcony, looking out over their front lawn and their quiet street. When Clarke gets a promotion at work and throws a party, she invites them both, and they drive over in Miller's car, and find out that their taste in music is almost exactly the same.

One night, as they sit side by side on the back porch, watching the sun fade into the horizon and listening to the chickens roaming free through the grass, Miller realizes they've fallen into a silence that is not quite comfortable. He wonders if they are sitting too close. Bryan is staring into the far distance, and Miller follows his gaze, taking in the last flare of burning, golden light, the stillness of the meadow grasses, the quiet of the garden.

"You've moved around a lot, I guess," Bryan says, then, without warning.

At first, Miller’s not sure what to say. He has. He's seen quite a bit of the world, but hasn’t done much else, so his travels tend to come up in conversation a lot. Just an hour ago, he was telling Bryan about his time in a youth hostel in Paris. But he's never told him the whole story of his life in any sort of chronological way, and, before now, Bryan has never asked.

"Yeah," he answers. "You could say that."

Bryan hums, and doesn't say anything more. Miller watches him bow his head and look down at his hands.

"Before I moved here," Miller continues, because somehow he feels like he hasn't truly answered, like he hasn't said enough, "I was living out in California. Right out on the coast, by the beach."

"California," Bryan echoes. He pulls up the corner of his mouth, not quite a smile. "That's a long way from here. Why'd you leave? Didn't like it?"

"No, I loved it." He loved the crash of the waves, he loved to surf, he loved that feeling like he was on the edge of the Earth, like his travels had brought him to the far end of the known at last. 

Or at least, he loved it for a while. But then he got bored. Started feeling hollow and lonely. Started wondering if this was really the end, the only purpose he'd ever had, the whole point of him.

"I just... didn't feel like I was going anywhere," he says aloud, then realizes how ridiculous this sounds, the guy who's been everything, going nowhere, and shakes his head and tries again. He looks out at their little garden, their tomatoes ripening in the last of the day’s light. He realizes that Bryan is watching him. "It felt like a dead end. I was—Bellamy says I grew up." He shrugs up one shoulder. It's not his favorite explanation, but maybe it will do. 

"You've known him since college, right?"

"Yeah. You know how I ended up in this town, instead of anywhere else?"

Bryan shakes his head.

"Because Bellamy lives here. That's it. He's someone I knew and liked. And he helped me get a job—that’s a plus. After college, he did what you're supposed to do. He settled down. He worked hard. Not like me. I had this degree, and no idea what to do with it, so I just..." He gestures widely. "I just went off."

"That sounds pretty amazing to me," Bryan says. "Getting to travel. That's like a dream life."

"It was for a while," he concedes. "And I don't regret it. But I was alone a lot. You know?" He glances at Bryan, not sure if he does, but the expression on his face is sympathetic. "Or in these fleeting relationships or making shallow friendships. I just... reached the end of that road. And then I," he shrugs. "I felt so incredibly unprepared for anything else."

Bryan doesn't answer right away, and when he does speak, his voice is soft, almost sad. "I know what you mean," he says. "I mean—not that I've traveled a lot, or anything. But that... just feeling lost and not knowing what you're supposed to do next. I know how that feels." 

Miller's not sure if he's supposed to ask about the story there, or just wait, if Bryan's ready to tell him or still working up the words. 

Then he starts speaking again. "I grew up in this house, you know? Lived here the whole first eighteen years of my life. Then I went away to college in the Northeast, and afterward I got a job up there, worked for a few years..." He trails off. Miller watches the way he rubs, hard, at the knuckles of his left hand with the fingers of his right. "Then my parents died," he says.

"Both of them?"

"Yeah." His mouth contorts again, almost an awkward, misplaced smile, but too rueful and sad. "In a car accident. So I came home. I'm an only child and... I kind of had to figure everything out for myself. I was going to sell the house, but it's been in my family for too long and... it is a nice place. I figured it would take me a long time to be able to afford anything this nice on my own. It just seemed… like the practical thing. To move back in." He shrugs. Glances at Miller, then away.

Miller's sure there are some words of sympathy that are supposed to go here, sympathy or even apology, that he could ever pretend that his self-made existential crisis matches up to Bryan's tragedy, but he doesn't quite know what the right phrases are. He gets the feeling Bryan would reject them all anyway. He didn't share this part of himself to get back platitudes, or even true expressions of compassion or concern. This is just something he wanted Miller to know.

"It is a nice place," Miller answers. "For what it's worth—" He puts his hand on Bryan's shoulder and squeezes, hard, and Bryan reaches up and covers Miller's hand with his own. "I think you made the right call."

"I think I did, too," Bryan says. He glances over again, and this time, his smile is small, but genuine. "Actually, I'm pretty certain I did." 

*

On Thursday, Miller forgets that he's working the late shift, and stumbles downstairs at seven-thirty a.m., looking for breakfast and coffee. Though he and Bryan have long perfected their morning routine, today they are inexplicably off. Instead of gracefully sliding and moving around each other—reaching for the toast, then passing the eggs; handing over a plate, exchanging the butter—they find themselves constantly running into each other and getting in each other's way. They grab for the spoons at the same time. Miller tries to open the fridge just as Bryan is walking past. Bryan only barely avoids cracking a cupboard door open against Miller's head. 

"This isn't our morning," Miller decides, right around then, as he ducks around the open cupboard door and stares, still bleary-eyed, at the mugs. Bryan's set the coffee to brew, but because he forgot to turn the pot on at first, it's only barely started to warm. It makes small bubbling sounds behind them as Miller rubs at his closed eyes with his fist.

"Clearly," Bryan answers. His voice sounds soft and distant, defeated, almost a sigh.

Miller opens his eyes again and reaches out for the biggest mug they have, but Bryan's had the same thought: their hands meet in the middle, fingers resting against fingers. Unexpected skin-on-skin contact, even as slight as this, is jarring. It wakes Miller up faster than the coffee would, like a bucket of ice water, or a slap in the face, because before he was thinking about work, and caffeine, and if he had time for eggs, and now he’s thinking about nothing but Bryan’s touch. 

Neither of them moves his hand right away. For a long moment, perhaps still more asleep than he'd believed, the thought of moving does not even cross Miller's mind.

"Ah, sorry," he says, finally, and sets his hand back down on the countertop. "Go ahead."

"No, you can have it," Bryan answers. He takes the mug down and sets it between them, then pushes it in Miller's direction.

"It's yours." He slides it back. "It's your mug." 

"You look like you need it."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"I'm just saying—"

"What?"

With each pass of the mug between them, they've inched closer, and now they are too close, subtle invaders of each other’s space, staring at each other in the high, clear morning light. Miller can see each of Bryan's lashes moving as he blinks. He does not, at this moment, care at all about the stupid mug.

He's thinking only that it would be nice to slide his hand around the back of Bryan's neck and pull him close and kiss him. This is the sort of thought he’s always having. The sort of thought he's always pushing away, because he's not sure, not sure it’s the right time, not sure even now, when Bryan’s breath hitches and he lifts his chin and he stares at Miller, steady, almost a dare.

But instead of leaning in, as Miller was so certain for a second he would do, he asks, "Why are you even awake?"

"Because I have work," Miller answers slowly. _Obviously_ , he does not add, even though it is.

Bryan's brow furrows. "No, you don't. Not for another seven hours."

This information takes several long seconds to burrow into Miller's brain, past the sleep fog and the haze of attraction he feels and the complete distraction that is the uneven set of Bryan's mouth—uncertain, not quite smiling, not quite sure if it's time yet to laugh at Miller's expense. But when full realization hits, he breathes, "Oh shit," and buries his face in his hands. "Oh _shit_ , you're right. It's _Thursday_. I'm an idiot."

"Hey," Bryan answers, an imitation of sternness, and he's definitely smiling now; Miller can hear it. He feels Bryan reach out and pat him on the shoulder. "You're not an idiot."

"I could have slept _in_."

"You can still sleep in. Go back to bed."

Miller looks up at last, his shoulders deflating as he glances back at the coffee, the empty bowl he took down from the cupboard for reasons that have, by now, escaped him. "Yeah," he says. "Yeah. Thanks for reminding me before I showed up to work a half-day early."

"Any time," Bryan answers. 

And that should be all. The moment gone. The tension broken. Except that Miller, in his relief, and not thinking about anything except going back upstairs and collapsing into bed, leans in before he leaves and kisses Bryan on the corner of the mouth. It just feels, somehow, like something he should do: as if they were old lovers, a habit as natural and easy as passing the orange juice or the milk. 

He pulls back. He feels more shocked than Bryan looks. Bryan is staring at him, an unreadable expression on his face, just staring and quiet, and as Miller opens his mouth to apologize, Bryan pulls him in by the shoulders and kisses him properly. A solid, square kiss, on the mouth, with tongue. 

Bryan ends up crowded against the counter next to the still-open cupboard, his hands grabbing at Miller's shirt, while Miller's fingers slide up into Bryan's hair and his teeth knock haphazardly against Bryan's teeth. It's a messy, frantic, breathless kiss. A kiss that is all instinct, passion, and need. One he's wanted for a long time, almost as much as he's wanted the moment after, when Bryan pulls away, but barely, lets his lips slide and drag down Miller's lips, and whispers, "Took us long enough, huh?"

Miller almost wants to laugh. "Yeah. How long do we have before you have to go? ’Bout an hour?"

"’Bout that, yeah."

"I think we can work with that."

"Oh, yeah." Bryan's leg is between his leg, his hand edging up beneath Miller's shirt. "Yeah, I think we can."

*

Two days later, they go on their first real date: to a semi-nice restaurant, where they talk about the places they'd like to travel together and spend an indecent amount of time holding hands.

Bellamy wants to know all the details.

 _Stop being nosy_ , Miller types out in answer, or tries to, though it's difficult to send a text one-handed while carrying two bags of groceries and also trying, simultaneously, to unlock the front door of his house. He realizes that this situation can only end in disaster. But he persists, because he's got a lot of luck going for him right now, and even if he drops the groceries all over the front porch, he knows his buoyant mood can't be brought down.

"Do you need some help, Nathan?" Mrs. Kane calls, and Miller almost loses his grip on his phone. He hadn't seen her standing on her side of the fence, watering the rose bushes, but when he catches sight of her, he smiles.

"Hi, Mrs. Kane," he calls back, holding up his hand and waving his phone at her. "No, thanks. I'm okay. How are you today?"

"I'm wonderful," she says, and smiles. "Oh, and I wanted to say thank you for those tomatoes you sent over yesterday. Bryan told me they were from both of you. I had one with breakfast this morning and it was delicious."

"Yeah, it's no problem. Everything tastes better when it's home grown, huh?" He slips his phone back in his pocket and readjusts his grip on the grocery bags. "Anyway, we were just saying thank you for the flowers you gave us."

"I know you have your own," Mrs. Kane says. "But I just wanted to share. It's so nice to have neighbors who appreciate the amazing bounty of the Earth."

"You know what, Mrs. Kane?" Miller answers, as he finally gets the key in the lock and shoves open the door. "I completely agree. And by the way—" He sets the grocery bags inside the door, then leans out again, and flashes her a smile. "About what you said the first day we met. You were right. New tenant, new boyfriend—same thing.”

He only says it aloud so that he can hear the word spoken in his own voice, get some practice forming the syllables with his own lips. It makes him smile, a wide and pleased and proud grin, as a warm feeling fills him from top to toe. 

Mrs. Kane is smiling, too. She doesn't look the least surprised. "You know what, Nathan?" she says. "I knew it was only a matter of time."

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Comments are always appreciated and answered. You can also find me on [tumblr](http://kinetic-elaboration.tumblr.com/)!


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